The Lucifer Gospel

35

Rutgers Bluff was located a dozen miles downstream on the Winter River from Fairfield, the county seat. That part of Illinois always had more to do with hillbillies and hicks than Oprah and the Miracle Mile, and if you were looking for a movie to describe it, you’d think of Deliverance, or maybe In Cold Blood. Most of the local population was of German descent and there weren’t many foreigners. You might have been born there and you might have stayed there through no fault of your own, but if you were thinking of opening a convenience store, Wayne County and Rutgers Bluff wouldn’t be your first choice.

The most common crimes in the county were rape, petty larceny, assault, and car theft, in that order. More people were on the county payroll as police than any other category. Names like Bruner, Ostrander, and Koch were common, and the white squirrel was the county animal, appearing on police patches and the stationery of county departments. No one could remember who Rutger had been but the bluff was still there, a stumpy, tree-covered escarpment that overlooked the river at what the locals called the Third Chute.

Long ago lumber had been an important part of the Wayne County economy and logs had been sent downstream to the big mills at Parkman. At the big rapids along the course of the Winter River wooden chutes had been built to convey the logs around the turbulent white water. Rutgers Bluff was the third set of these. The Fourth Chute was located two miles downriver at thirty-eight degrees, thirty-two minutes twenty-five seconds north, eighty-eight degrees, ten minutes, twenty-two seconds west, the numbers set out in plastic playing cards by a dead man aboard a sunken cruise ship several thousand miles away to the south a little more than half a century before.

“This can’t be right,” said Hilts, looking first at the handheld Garmin unit and then at the bruised, desolate scene around them. It was pouring rain and both he and Finn were soaking wet, even though they’d picked up a pair of cheap rubber ponchos and two rain hats at a sporting goods store in Fairfield. They were standing in front of their rental Ford on an old steel bridge across Winter River just above the rapids. From end to end the bridge was no more than fifty feet long and was just barely wide enough for two cars to pass. On one side of the bridge was rough brush country, second-cut old spruce and pine and miles of gray swamp and slash. Directly in front of them was an open meadow beside the river. A tumble-down barn stood on one side of the road and a farmhouse and several outbuildings on the other. A rustic summer-camp-style sign had been erected over a narrow track that led past the farmhouse to the outbuildings. In roughly trimmed pine branches the arching sign read: CAVERNS OF WONDER.

To the left of the entrance, propped up on the old split-rail fence, was a plywood cut-out of Jesus painted with a yellow halo that looked more like a straw hat and brown sandals that looked vaguely like army boots. A blue-and-white Mary leaned against the other side of the gateway. Apparently the Mother of Christ had been a blonde. The paint looked very old and faded. Below the “of” in Caverns of Wonder another square of plywood had been added that read: “$10.” White on black.

“This just can’t be right,” Hilts repeated. “ Caverns of Wonder? This is a tourist trap. Or was. It looks deserted.”

“Do the numbers match?” Finn asked.

“Exactly.”

“Then this is it.” She nodded toward the plywood Savior. “Jesus of Illinois. Bit too much for coincidence, don’t you think?”

“It’s a joke.”

“Too many dead bodies to be very funny. And if it is a joke, our friend Adamson is going to be seriously ticked off.”

“You think he’s figured it out?”

“He had your digital camera. If he hasn’t got it figured by now it won’t be long.”

They climbed back into the car and drove beneath the arching sign. They parked in an old gravel lot beside what might have once been a snack booth or a gift shop. Behind it was a makeshift row of outhouses. Grass had grown up everywhere. The hinges on the big front flap of the snack booth had rusted through and the flap sagged like old skin. A little to the left on a small rise of land was the farmhouse. The roof sagged and the chimney had collapsed. It was a blind and dead place. The front yard was a sea of brambles, with the wreck of an old truck by the front door, an International Harvester Scout, blue and white and rust. The tires were rotted away and the cracked windshield was covered in bird droppings. Everything was gray in the rain.

“Twilight Zone,” murmured Hilts, looking out across the parking lot. At the far end was the burnt-out hulk of what might have been a school bus.

“I was thinking more along the lines of Nightmare on Elm Street.”

“Part twenty-six: Jason Takes Rutgers Bluff.”

“So what do we do now?” said Finn.

“Check it out. See if this was what Devereaux really found.”

“Is there anything about this place in the guidebook you bought?”

They’d picked up a local guide in the same place they’d bought the ponchos and the rest of their things. Hilts picked the small booklet up off the dashboard and leafed through it.

“Fourth Chute, Winter River. First discovered by English cabinet-maker and infamous drunkard Tom Woodward in 1829. Woodward fell down a sinkhole and had a vision of the Redemption after being trapped in the lightless caverns for six days. For the rest of his life Woodward decorated the caves in a glowing tribute to his religious conversion and sobriety. His Shrine of the Holy Mother in the Ninth Grotto has been the site of several miraculous and unexplained natural and unnatural events. Ten-dollar admission. Includes prayer pamphlet and glow-in-the-dark Caverns of Wonder key tag. Bus Tours welcome. Parking. Refreshments.” Hilts closed the book. “Natural and unnatural events.”

“Glowing key tag.”

“This is not what Devereaux discovered.”

“Yes, it is,” said Finn. “At least part of it. He died leaving a clue to this place. There must have been a reason.”

Hilts sighed. He reached across her and took a flashlight out of the glove compartment. “Come on.”

She followed him out of the car and into the grinding rain. It was the kind of rain Noah must have faced; not much in itself, but relentless, as in Northern Ireland, where it hasn’t stopped raining for a thousand years, merely paused from time to time. They crunched across the parking lot to the screen of trees and the burnt-out bus. On closer inspection, she thought the bus had probably been the source of the Refreshments mentioned in the guide. The remains of a scorched metal sign offered hot dogs, Stalactite Burgers, Stalagmite Chili, and fresh-cut Bat Fries. A path to one side led between the trees and down a rocky path that led toward the river.

“Listen,” said Finn, putting a hand out and grabbing Hilts’s arm.

They paused.

“I don’t hear anything,” he said. “The rapids. The rain.”

“Keep listening.” Deep behind everything else was a steady chattering sound, muffled and distant. Every few seconds there was a stuttering thump.

“What is it?” said Hilts, finally hearing it. “A generator?”

“A pump,” said Finn, after a long moment. “A sump pump, like the ones they use on flooded basements.”

“Down in the Wonder Caves?”

“Caverns of Wonder,” corrected Finn.

“Whatever.” The photographer sighed.

“Maybe something automatic that starts up when it rains.”

“I’d like to see that warranty,” scoffed Hilts. “Nobody’s had this place as a going concern for years. Decades maybe.”

They were headed downward, the trail actually becoming a set of steps cut into the stone. Hilts saw a crushed and flattened soda tin on the ground and picked it up. Recognizably Coca-Cola. Even in its condition it was obvious that it had been opened with an old-fashioned spear can opener. “How long ago were zip tops invented anyway?” He threw the can into the bushes.

“In 1962,” said Finn. “A guy named Ermal Fraze from Dayton. My mother went to grade school with him. I wrote a paper about it for an archaeology class: ‘Interpretation of the Zip Top opener as ornament or tool; aids for the historian of the future.’ I got an A.”

“You should have been committed. Ermal Fraze?”

“Ermal Fraze,” she said and nodded. “Strickley Elementary School. Mom says they have a plaque. Girl Guides Honor.” The steps flattened into a broad plateau overlooking the rapids and the quieter water beyond. Half shrouded by young sugar maple saplings, wet green in the rain, was the entrance to the Caverns of Wonder. The bare limestone above it showed undulating cakey layers filled with dirt and moss, slick and muddy. The entrance itself had been squared off with timbers so old they seemed part of the stone around them. There were the remains of a heavy plank door, but it had long ago been torn off its hinges. There was a sign over the entrance like the one on the gate, only smaller, branches nailed to plywood, the upright for the D in Wonder missing so it read CAVERNS OF WONCER. Rainwater was running down the squared log steps leading down to the hole. There was a handrail made of a gray, dead and rotted spruce bough.

“Looks wet,” said Hilts

“That’s because it’s raining,” replied Finn. “It’ll be drier inside.”

“Famous last words.”

“Are you coming or not?”

“Lead on.”

Finn went down the steps carefully, holding on to the rail. Hilts was close behind. As she passed beneath the entrance he snapped on the flashlight. There were more steps beyond and a maze of supports and roof beams. The steps went down into darkness. It looked more like an abandoned mine shaft than a holy grotto. So far she hadn’t seen anything even faintly religious. Her mind flailed around desperately trying to find some connection between an old limestone solution cave on the banks of a raging river in southern Illinois and a gold medallion in the possession of a mummified corpse in the Libyan Desert.

Based on the actions of Adamson and his colleagues the connection was more than tenuous-in fact, it was as solid as a steel bar. Solid enough for them to kill for, and more than once.

The steps ended and became a meandering boardwalk through a series of roomlike openings that were barely worthy of the word “cave,” let alone “cavern.” It looked as though at some point the Winter River or some tributary of it had cut through the rocks and over time had worn a narrow pathway, rarely wider than an arm span. Here and there along the walkway were stalactites and stalagmites and lavalike tables of accreted stone, but for Finn, who had been raised in a world of Mayan tombs and subterranean archaeological sites, the Rutgers Bluff Caverns of Wonder were pretty small potatoes. A minor show cave or roadside attraction, like the giant concrete egg she’d once seen in Men-tone, Indiana, or seven-story concrete statues of Jesus in Arkansas. What was here that could have affected the outcome of World War Two or interested anyone in the Vatican? It was absurd.

“There,” said Hilts.

“What?” she answered, stopping as his voice brought her away from her thoughts. He switched off the flashlight. Suddenly the narrow, arched cave they were standing in was alive with green, glowing images.

“Glow-in-the-dark key tags,” said Hilts. A goggle-eyed Jesus looked down from a stalactite. Mary prayed by a pool of stone. Fish swam across the ceiling with teeth like sharks’ and tails like guppies’. The Sermon on the Mount was rendered in knobs and blobs of stone painted with staring faces, and banners were crudely lettered with quotations from Scripture.

“Like the Haunted Mansion at Disney World,” said Finn. “Only God is doing the haunting.”

“It’s awful,” said Hilts, staring. They continued along the boardwalk and into the next cave. It was the size of a front porch and about as exciting. It was also grotesque. A huge Last Supper undulated across the arching ceiling, like a huge picnic table in flight, Apostles and cherubs and clouds, Judas with a hairline like Dracula and a winding tale like a bad dream by William Blake. Tasteless, talentless, and badly researched. Christ facing left instead of right, Simon the Zealot with long hair rather than bald, chalice in front of Christ when there was none. Thirteen disciples, not twelve.

Now that’s interesting, thought Finn. Even an illiterate who was even remotely Christian in this nation knew there were twelve, although almost no one except a priest or minister could actually name them. She had specialized in religious art of the Renaissance and she wasn’t sure she could do it herself. She stared up at the gigantic, hideous meal floating above her on the stony dripping ceiling and ticked them off in her mind, left to right: Bartholomew, James the Lesser and Andrew, Judas, Peter and John, or Mary Magdalene if you were a Dan Brown fan, followed by Thomas, James the Greater and Phillip, then Matthew, Jude, and lastly, Simon the Zealot. So who was the thirteenth figure, looming off to one side behind Simon in this ghastly rendition of the world’s most famous painting and second most famous literary meal? She stared. There wasn’t a lot of detail in the eight-foot-tall figure glowing on a slime-covered rocky wall made even slicker by the volumes of rain seeping through from above. It was a male, wearing a robe, bearded, one arm at its side, the other raised and pointing at… what?

“The last figure on the right?”

“The one pointing?”

“That’s the one.”

“What about him?”

“What’s he pointing at, exactly? Can you tell?”

“Looks like some kind of drapery over in the corner,” answered Hilts, pointing the flashlight. On the far side of the room a large flow of soluble lime had dropped down to form a pool. When the water in the cave had receded or been pumped out there was nothing left behind except a flowing cascade of stone called a Baldacchino canopy.

“I want to take a look,” said Finn. She slipped under the guardrail of the boardwalk and stepped carefully onto the wet surface of the cave floor beyond. Water trilled coldly up to her ankles. Slipping now was not an option.

“Why?”

She still wasn’t quite sure, but she suddenly knew that something from her distant childhood was calling her. The excitement of opening the secret door in the wardrobe to Narnia, of entering Merlin’s Crystal Cave, stepping into Dr. Who’s phone booth or Ray Bradbury’s Green Town, which if she recalled was also in Illinois.

“Did you know that they call this whole part of Illinois Little Egypt, and nobody knows why?” she called out, her voice echoing in the semidarkness. She kept carefully in the cone of light thrown by Hilts’s flashlight and concentrated on the slippery footing.

“I didn’t know that, no,” said Hilts, following her off the wooden boardwalk.

“Some people say it’s because southern Illinois supplied a lot of grain to the north in the bad winter of 1830-31. Other people say it’s because the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri reminds them of the Nile Delta. For some reason people gave places a lot of Egyptian names around here: Cairo, Karnak, Dongola, and Thebes. Even Memphis, if you want to stretch a point. They even have a giant glass pyramid for a basketball arena.”

“I’m not sure I see the point.”

“If you’re in a Catholic church, where do you hide a candle?”

“With all the other candles,” he answered.

“Exactly,” she said. She reached the Baldacchino canopy, braced herself, and slid around to one side.

“What?” Hilts said, coming carefully up behind her.

“I think I found it,” she whispered.

“What?”

“The candle.” She moved two feet to the right and disappeared before his eyes. Hilts stared, playing the light over the waterfall-like slab of ancient flowstone. There was no sign of her.

“Where are you?”

“Right in front of you,” said her disembodied voice. Suddenly she was there again, her bright face and wet, spiky dyed hair shining in the flashlight beam.

“How did you do that?”

“It’s the Caverns of Wonder. A miracle.”

“Show me.”

“Give me the light and take my hand.”

He put his hand in hers and squeezed. She squeezed back and he handed her the flashlight. Suddenly the cave was plunged into total, blind man’s darkness, the complete absence of light. She tugged his hand and he slipped behind the canopy with her.

Hilts found himself in a stiflingly small passage directly behind the oozing apron of rock. It was a space so close he could feel the wet stone brushing against him front and back. He was in some terrible crawl space: a crack in the world.

“Oh, jeez.”

“It’s okay.” A click echoed in the stifling space. Light flushed to the right and he saw that the narrow passage led to his right. There wasn’t even room enough to turn around.

“You’re kidding.”

“Come on.”

She shuffled to the right down the stick-thin passage, and he had no choice but to follow. It was either that or be left in the darkness. The farther he went the higher his heart moved into his throat. He thought of a hundred situations: a fall of rock, more rain, mud, simply getting stuck, glued in place. Some basic Freudian-Jungian-Stephen Kingian thing: man’s unholy heart-pounding nightmarish fear of being buried alive; the slight tension as a train goes into a tunnel under a mountain of suffocating rock.

He shuffled forward, concentrating on the feel of the soft pads of flesh on her palm and the curl of her fingers around his own. She was as small and light as a child, but there was a fierceness in her that he would have associated with a drill sergeant. It was as though times like this brought out the strength in her, a steel core able to withstand the worst that man or nature had to offer. Survival instinct. Something in her DNA that went back a million years.

“Look,” she whispered. Hilts suddenly realized that he’d been shuffling along with his eyes squeezed tightly shut. He opened them. Directly ahead the tunnel seemed to widen. Finn reached up with her free hand and touched the stone.

“This has been worked,” she said.

“Worked?”

“It’s not natural. It’s man-made.” She shifted along another few feet and Hilts felt as though he’d been released from jail. There was room to move. The passage had at least a foot of leeway on either side.

Hilts saw that she was right. In the pale glow from the flashlight the marks on the stone were obvious. Someone had carved out the passage in this godforsaken hole in the ground. They moved along with ease now and both of them became aware that the tunnel was gradually both turning and sloping downward. Sometimes the natural untouched stone could be seen; whoever had done this had followed the course of a natural fault. Thinking about the drapery of rock back in the cave far behind them, it occurred to Hilts that this might have once been the natural course of a stream or spring. Finn agreed.

They went on for an hour. Hilts began to have fond sense memories of the huge Heartland Big Slamble, or whatever it had been at the Interstate Denny’s that morning. A cup of the worst roadside coffee in the world would have truly been a miracle at this point. The rain and the steady forty-degree chill of the caves was striking to his bones. The claustrophobia had receded but by no means had disappeared. An hour in meant an hour out if they went back the way they’d come, and his imagination was fully capable of constructing desperate, gloomy horror stories. So far at least, thank heavens, there had been no bats or other subterranean wildlife. Hilts was not a big fan of things that made your skin crawl; deserts, not storm drains, were his area of expertise. And then, instantly, the narrow path came to an end. Light.

“My God!” whispered Finn, stepping out of the passageway.

“Jesus!” said Hilts.

They were both right.

The dome rose above them in a single sweeping arc of stone, at least a hundred feet high from where they stood and half again as high from the floor of the gigantic cavern. Light shone brightly and mysteriously from a thousand niches on ten thousand figures, all of them carved by Egypt’s finest stonemasons over a lifetime in the wilderness more than a millennia in the past. Bigger than the Sistine Chapel, higher than St. Peter’s, it was something no one man could have even imagined in a single lifetime, let alone constructed. Every angel, patriarch, and saint was there, every mystery and splendor from the Advent to the Resurrection, from the Garden to the Ark. All swirling upward in an astounding vortex of living art ascending to the heavens. It was beyond breathtaking. Past awe. A gift of utter beauty without the slightest touch of vengefulness or retribution, divine or otherwise. Around the base of the giant room small caves were hollowed out, some still with heavy wooden doors, others blank and open, the entrances like empty eyes. Cells. Once, a long, long time ago, this place had been occupied. Now it was only a massive tomb, built for the ages, unseen.

Finn and Hilts stood frozen, stunned by the un-imagined scale and proportions of what they were seeing, diminished by a monument that could have swallowed New York’s Statue of Liberty a hundred times and might even have made Mt. Rushmore look inadequate.

“What is this place?” Finn whispered. She found a set of stone steps carved before her and slowly made her way toward the bottom of the immense cavern, head back, craning her neck as she went. If the Great Pyramid at Giza had been hollow, this is what it might have looked like. A world within a world.

“Many years ago, in Thomas Woodward’s time, they called this place Jeremiah’s Grotto,” said a voice, echoing in the enormous chamber. An old man stepped out of the shadows on the far side of the dome and approached them. “Which of course is one of the names associated with the Tomb of Christ. It is not that place, but it is interesting that such a reputation should still be associated with it.” He tapped his way across the floor, weaving his way through stacks and piles and racks of narrow-necked circular jars like the clay containers of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran. “Woodward stumbled on this place but he was a drunkard and a famous sinner, so no one believed him. The Keepers then simply bought his silence and cooperation with more drink.”

Finn peered into the flickering half-light as the old man came forward. He was tall and only a little stooped, leaning lightly on a heavy cane. In his free hand he was carrying what appeared to be a leather bundle rolled up and tied with a bright gold chain. His hair was steel gray and cut short, almost military. He was wearing old corduroy trousers and a dark blue knitted sweater that might have belonged to a seaman. He wore old, high-button boots and steel-rimmed spectacles. His voice was flat and Midwestern, but deep beneath there was a hint of something else. A sophistication that said something of foreign lands seen long ago. With a terrible lurch in her heart Finn realized that this old man reminded her of her father.

“Who are you?”

“The last of the Keepers.”

“Keepers?”

“Keepers of this place. Its stewards, if you will.” He smiled sadly. “More or less the janitor who cares for the True Word of Christ.”

“I don’t get it,” said Hilts. “This place, in the middle of nowhere. It doesn’t seem possible.”

“What is the Libyan Desert if not the middle of nowhere? In relation to Rome, during the heights of empire, Jerusalem was just as much the middle of nowhere; the very ends of the earth to be exact. For Moses the Sinai was the middle of nowhere. To a New Yorker this part of Illinois is still the middle of nowhere. Einstein was right, Mr. Hilts; it’s all relative. I could spin you exotic tales of Lost Templar Fleets, of the ocean-spanning navy of King Solomon, whose temple is mimicked in the exact measurements of the Sistine Chapel, about Nostradamus, about the New Jerusalem your friend the madman Adamson hopes to found.”

“He’s no friend of ours,” said Finn.

“At least we beat him here,” grunted Hilts.

“As a matter of fact, you didn’t,” said the old man. “He arrived yesterday. He’s been in Olney, a few miles away, gathering equipment and information. I expect he’ll be along shortly.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know a great deal, Mr. Hilts. About you and my old friend Arthur Simpson, poor soul. About you and your father, Ms. Ryan.” He smiled again. “It comes with the job, you might say.”

Again Finn caught the faint edge of an accent in the distant past. With a breathtaking flash she had it. “You’re the monk. DeVaux.”

He nodded, smiling wearily.

“Pierre DeVaux, Peter Devereaux, Paul Devers now. Never a monk, though, that was a pretence. A priest always. A priest forever.”

“A murderer,” said Hilts. “You killed Pedrazzi. And if that’s not you on the Acosta Star, then who was it locked in your cabin?”

“Death and secrets are hardly strange bedfellows, Mr. Hilts. Pedrazzi tried to kill me in that terrible place in the desert. He’d discovered who I was and knew I’d never let him give the secret to a man like Mussolini to use as a trading piece in some political game. He tried to kill me; I merely defended myself.”

“And on the ship?” Finn said.

“In the cabin? Kerzner, the man sent to kill me by your father’s people, Ms. Ryan. The man bought and paid for by Adamson’s grandfather. The bishop never made an appearance. One can only presume he died in the fire.”

“How did he know the exact location of this place?” asked Hilts.

“Because I told him,” said the old man. “Just before I left him to die. It was his last wish.”

“You really are a bastard,” said Hilts, curling his lip.

“That too,” said the old man with a shrug. “Most of us were. Foundlings, orphans. The refuse of life. It seemed like a good seeding ground.”

“Us?” asked Finn.

“The Keepers.”

“Of this place?”

“Of what it contains.”

“Which is?”

“The True Word.”

“The Lucifer Gospel.”

“Hardly Lucifer’s. He only guarded it. He was the first Keeper of the Word. This is his place.” He spread his arms, staring upward into the infinity of the soaring stone above him.

“I’m getting confused,” said Finn.

“I’m getting a headache,” said Hilts. “I’m standing in a place that shouldn’t exist lit by lights that shouldn’t be burning, talking to a man who should be dead. None of this makes any sense at all.”

“A thousand years ago the lights were made with mirrors, the rock was carved with the sweat and honest effort of faithful men, and the only reason I have stayed alive is to protect the secret of this place until it can no longer be protected.”

“And then?” Finn said softly. “What then?”

“And then I shall destroy it,” the old man said simply.

“You’re crazy,” said Hilts.

“Perhaps,” said the old man. “But the time for the words of men like Christ is over now. There are new gods, I’m afraid.” He held up the little leather-wrapped package. “When that time comes the Place of Secrets must be destroyed and the Gospel of the Light destroyed along with it. The instructions are quite clear,” he added sadly.

“But why?” Finn urged. “Why destroy all of this?”

“Because if all cannot have it, no one person shall. Light is meant to illuminate, after all, it should not be used as power.”

“Then tell everyone.”

“The simple revelation of its existence would be used against it. It would be used as a rallying cry by Adamson and his people. This place, His Word, was not meant for that. Crusades are fought with blood and swords, not faith and sacrifice.”

The shot rang out like an alien thing in the chamber, striking the old man before it was heard, whirling him around where he stood and dropping him to the floor of the giant cave. There was a series of small explosions, sharp and hard against their ears, and then, almost as though it was a signal, the light in the huge domed cavern was extinguished and total darkness fell. It remained that way for a moment and then the blackness was pierced by half a dozen brilliant narrow beams of green.

“Night-vision glasses,” whispered Hilts. He felt around on the floor and found the groaning huddled shape of the old man.

“You’re hit?” Finn asked.

“The shoulder. I’ll live,” said Devereaux. “For the moment, at any rate. Long enough.”

“We have to get you out of here,” said Hilts.

“You’ve got to get yourself out of here, before it’s too late.”

“We’ve got to get you to a hospital.”

“You are two hundred and thirty-seven feet underground. On the far side of this cavern is an exit that leads directly to the Winter River, separated by a shield of brittle rock that I can remove at any time I wish. Adamson thinks he has won. He thinks he has triumphed. He thinks he has finally gained the ultimate prize that will give him a nation. He has found nothing. Only the darkness.”

“Grab him by the legs,” Hilts instructed. All around them now the green lines of light were twisting back and forth.

“Sinkholes,” gasped the old man as they dragged him across the floor of the cavern. “He’s coming in from the old entrances above.”

Suddenly Adamson’s voice boomed into the air from a bullhorn.

“I don’t know how you did it, but you won’t survive this time!”

“He’s nuts.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” said Finn.

They finally managed to reach the edge of the cavern. Their backs were to the sloping stone wall. She felt the old man gripping the lapels of her jacket.

“You must get away.”

“How are we supposed to do that?” asked Hilts.

“The Medusa Gate.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Over each of the monks’ cells a mask was carved into the stone. Medusa was the patron goddess of Lucifer’s Legion. Find it and you find the way.”

There was a harsh sound like tearing cloth and a flare burst overhead, throwing the dome into stark outline. At least a dozen men were rappelling down on dangling ropes from the ceiling of the cavern. All of them were armed.

“There!” Adamson bellowed. There was a burst of gunfire. Bullets ricocheted off the rock walls beside them.

The garish, hot light from the flare began to fade. Finn spotted something.

“The Medusa!” She pointed.

“Come on, bring him!” said Hilts, taking the old man under the arms again. In the last light from the flare Finn could see the wound. It was bubbling, lower on his torso than the shoulder. A lung, or worse.

“Leave me,” said Devereaux weakly. “If you try to bring me you will fail. Go!” he commanded.

“We’ll get help!” said Hilts.

“Go! Now!” said the old man.

They ran. The flare died out completely, leaving them in utter darkness except for the piercing lines of green. They stumbled over the rocky uneven floor of the cavern.

“One of those guys lights us up, we’re toast,” said Hilts.

There was another tearing sound and the air around them exploded in sudden light. There, only a few feet away now, was the small cell-like entrance marked with the same Medusa image as the one on the medallion.

“Run!” Hilts yelled, pushing Finn ahead of him toward the dark entrance. She looked back over her shoulder and saw the old man, sagging against the wall of the gigantic, wondrous place that had been in his charge for so many years. He was smiling.

Bullets flew, whining like a swarm of angry hornets. She rushed into darkness, ducking her head below the hideous, snake-haired goddess, and stumbled into the little cave. In the light from the new flare she saw that it was no cell at all but the foot of a stone stairway leading upward.

“Climb!” Hilts yelled.

She moved swiftly to the steps and began to struggle upward, the photographer close behind her, his breath harsh and grating as they pressed onward.

Minutes passed and still they climbed. Horribly, from somewhere far below, they heard other footsteps ringing on the stone. Then, with a terrible sound like the very heart of the earth breaking below them, there was a terrible roar and air pushed around them like wind from a tunnel.

“What was that!?”

“Keep going.”

They kept climbing but the sound grew louder, a guttering, windy roar, and then it was upon them, a flushing horror of rock and debris that gathered them in its choking belly and pushed them upward in a tumbling torrent, hammering them with bruising force against the stone walls of the stairwell. The icy flood was like a battering ram that finally expelled them in a geyser of water on a cold stone floor. Gasping, choking, they climbed to their knees as more water flooded up from below, filling the chamber they were in.

“Where are we!?” Finn gasped, climbing to her feet, hanging on to Hilts as she rose.

“Some kind of basement,” he coughed, looking around. He pointed across the swirling pool of filthy water climbing up the walls. “Stairs.” He grabbed her hand and they waded across to the short stairway and climbed upward. There was a plain wooden door at the top. Hilts pushed it open and they stepped out into a musty-smelling country kitchen. There was a woodstove in one corner, an old dry sink, and a rough wood table with a few old chairs in the center of the room. Through a grimy window Finn could see out into the rainy parking lot of the Caverns of Wonder. They were in the kitchen of the old, decrepit farmhouse.

“This is how the old man got in and out, I guess,” said Hilts, dropping down into one of the chairs. “Thank God it’s over.”

“I wouldn’t get too comfortable,” said Finn suddenly. There was a dangerous creaking sound all around them, then a lurching sensation as the floor at their feet skewed and twisted, as though they were in the middle of an earthquake. Hilts got to his feet again. Above them the ceiling began to crack, plaster cascading down. The floor lurched again and the window shattered as the frame twisted out of its slot.

They ran for the door leading out onto the sagging porch, barely making it before the roof behind them tumbled inward with a roar as the ruined old house collapsed inward onto itself. They raced outside into the rain and saw that the ground was cracking beneath them, huge rents in the earth appearing as the air thundered with the sound of the cavern destroying itself.

“The whole river is going to change course,” Finn whispered. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

They ran for the car where it waited at the edge of the parking lot, reaching it just as the ground opened up and swallowed the old school bus before their eyes. Hilts got behind the wheel, fumbled at the ignition and then at last got the car started. He pushed it into drive, slammed his foot down on the gas, and they rocketed away. They reached the arching gate a second or so before it collapsed, then lurched out onto the country road and away. As the Caverns of Wonder raced behind them Finn let her head fall back against the seat, exhausted. Then, suddenly, she sat forward, frowning.

“What’s wrong?” said Hilts.

She reached into her jacket and pulled out the leather bundle Devereaux had been carrying. She unwrapped the chain and saw it held a medallion like the one they’d found on Pedrazzi’s body. She peeled apart a little of the leather and saw what was underneath. A scroll on metal, the copper ancient, green and oxidized, but the writing in clear cuneiform script.” The last of the Lucifer Gospel.”

“He must have slipped it into my jacket when he grabbed me,” she whispered hoarsely. “I didn’t know.”

“So now what do we do?” said Hilts, driving them away.

Finn let her head drop back wearily again and closed her eyes. Who knew what the scroll contained? What promise, what words, what power?

“I’ve Got An Idea.” She Smiled.